Pete Rose, Major League Baseball’s all-time career hit leader, will return to Philadelphia and appear at Christ’s Church of the Valley on Sunday, March 30, 2014. Rose will appear live and be interviewed by Senior Pastor, Brian Jones during each service at 9:00, 10:15 and 11:30 AM.

The linked announcement features the pastor opining that he “truly believe[s] his debt has been paid and should be reinstated.” Which is all well and good, but if I were him I’d need more in the way of reassurances.

Put Rose in charge of Bingo Night for a month. If everything is on the up-and-up, Selig will take a meeting. Cool?

What a sellout!
His hard-nosed all-time-hits-leader on-field rep certainly does not bother me. His betting on baseball (and lying) didn’t really upset me either. Selling his memorabilia, dating woman young enough to be his granddaughter and other such “newsworthy” actions are really his own business.
But to be involved with CHURCHES? Now I can safely say I have no respect for the man as an off-the-field entity.

I like when scumbags hide behind religion. Even if he is religious, it seems as though going to church is making people think they are “good” regardless of their other actions, leading to them behaving like total dirtbags.

This pastor is seriously confused about his scope of authority. Also, apparently, he doesn’t know the proper way to send messages to Bud Selig is via the US Postal Service. I hope, if Rev. Jones is a season ticket holder that when he goes to renew, the team gives him an obstructed view — since he appreciates imperfection so much.

If we can hold the home run king out of the HOF for abuse of PEDs, something that compromised himself but did not compromise the game of baseball, then we certainly should hold a guy who compromised the integrity of the game out. Rose had many great accomplishments, but his actions were just as terrible as those of the Black Sox and while his accomplishments should be enshrined, Rose the player should not be.

Dude, I’m sorry I passed out while somebody was trying to educate me on ethics. The home run king should be in there as well. So should the entire handful of guys being kept out due to steroids or supposed steroids. I’ve never done steroids and I’ve never bet on baseball while being a ball player and yadayadayada. But in my opinion the hall of fame has no credibility to ME until it puts them in. There have been many PED guys and gamblers that I’m sure didn’t get caught and some of them are most likely in. With that being said I also have no credibility for any hall of gamer that played before integration as well. So half the current HOF has an asterisk if you ask me.

Reflex - Mar 12, 2014 at 8:38 PM

I’m not entirely in disagreement with you. PEDs are overblown although I don’t shed tears for the proven PED users being held out either(the ones who are only ‘suspected’ by sportswriters should NOT be held out under any circumstances short of hard evidence).

But I do think those who compromised the integrity of the game itself, which is what Rose and the Black Sox did, should not be in the HoF. Their accomplishments should be of course, but the player themselves should not be enshrined.

It’s not really that surprising, I suppose. It’s a combination of indoctrination from a young age and in many cases immense family and social pressure. The good news is that it’s dying. Religion probably won’t ever be completely gone and it certainly won’t be marginalized in my lifetime, but it’s dying. We’re making progress and that’s a good thing.

Dying may be a strong word, but in diverse cultures, I can sort of see how freedom of religion would lead to a decline in religion overall. Each generation gets exposed more to other people with different beliefs, they wonder why their own is any more “correct,” then just give up religion altogether. And the stigma of atheism declines also.

I think that may be part of it, but the larger piece is science. Everytime religion butts heads with science, it loses. We’re coming up with natural explanations for answers that used to require “god did it.” Think about that for a second. The infallible book of god’s word actually has been proven demonstrably wrong in many instances. If a person has any intellectual honesty, they have to admit that the evidence is piling up against the nonsense preached by Christianity, Islam, and the other organized religions. It also doesn’t help that in this country, religion is seen as the driving force behind a lot of hatred.

jm91rs

Check the polls. They all show people of no religious affiliation growing. Especially amongst young people. They also show the most religious of people as being the oldest subset of people. So yes, religion is literally dying.